Growing the roots of STEM majors: Female math and science high school faculty and the participation of students in STEM

Date

2015-04-01

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Repository Usage Stats

165
views
0
downloads

Citation Stats

Attention Stats

Abstract

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd.The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is problematic given the economic and social inequities it fosters and the rising global importance of STEM occupations. This paper examines the role of the demographic composition of high school faculty-specifically the proportion of female high school math and science teachers-on college students' decisions to declare and/or major in STEM fields. We analyze longitudinal data from students who spent their academic careers in North Carolina public secondary schools and attended North Carolina public universities. Our results suggest that although the proportion of female math and science teachers at a school has no impact on male students, it has a powerful effect on female students' likelihood of declaring and graduating with a STEM degree, and effects are largest for female students with the highest math skills. The estimates are robust to the inclusion of controls for students' initial ability.

Department

Description

Provenance

Subjects

Citation

Published Version (Please cite this version)

10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.01.002

Publication Info

Bottia, MC, E Stearns, RA Mickelson, S Moller and L Valentino (2015). Growing the roots of STEM majors: Female math and science high school faculty and the participation of students in STEM. Economics of Education Review, 45. pp. 14–27. 10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.01.002 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/13686.

This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.


Unless otherwise indicated, scholarly articles published by Duke faculty members are made available here with a CC-BY-NC (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial) license, as enabled by the Duke Open Access Policy. If you wish to use the materials in ways not already permitted under CC-BY-NC, please consult the copyright owner. Other materials are made available here through the author’s grant of a non-exclusive license to make their work openly accessible.